Dad
by Fallowdoe
Summary: Alternate Universe-- Wesley considers some choices from his past, and the prospects for the future.


--- Dad ---  
  
Warm sunlight hung on Wesley's face as he sat alone in his study. He could hear cheerful commotion in the house. Up and down, up and down the stairs. Doors were slamming, and the teenage feet were tromping about, tripping with poorly packed bags. The boy was playing the old Beatles' albums on the old stereo.  
  
The sun floated lazily over the desk. Over his cooling tea. He leaned back in his leather chair. Dust motes danced around his hands, around the blotter and the papers and the gilded sculpture of the fencer, poised and ready to strike. Around the inscription there, the boy's name. One of the trophies.  
  
There were more. Glistening, brass-and-plastic trophies crowded with medals and ribbons, crowding out his books in the barrister bookcases. The boy always brought them up to the study, when he brought them home, and gave them to Wesley with shy, earnest, and eminently hopeful smiles. He was ravenously hungry for Wesley's approval, always, and pursued it with passionate intensity.  
  
But he had to put a stop to it. No fencing, no cricket. No football especially. When the couches started calling enthusiastically with words like 'national championships' and sometimes even 'Olympics' on their lips, he had to end it. They couldn't draw that much attention.  
  
Wesley told him he had to concentrate on his studies. That there were things more important than the little dreams that seemed so important now. And even though by then a teenager and probably ashamed to do it, he had heard the boy crying that night through his bedroom door.  
  
But no matter how many times Wesley pushed him away, the boy only clung harder, shaking off his coldness with all the easy conviction of a warm and resilient nature.  
  
It seemed wrong, somehow, to get too close. He couldn't usurp that place in the child's life, too. He couldn't take everything, no matter how good the reason.  
  
The sounds of commotion softly intoned around him. Through the open window, he heard the sound of the car trunk opening, and of the boy calling hello to the old Williams woman across the road. The light, breezy voice floated up.  
  
Yes, he was going off to University today. Yes, he was that old already. No, he wouldn't forget to visit when he was home. Of course not, Mrs. Williams, he wouldn't forget how good her peach pies were while he's gone. And if there's a girlfriend, of course you'll get to meet her.  
  
It was all vaguely dreamlike. Sometimes when he woke, or when he looked at the boy smiling at him with love in his eyes, something in him questioned if it could really be real. It was as the world was bound up with nearly invisible gauze-- separated from him by a diaphanous curtain that no one else could see.  
  
"Dad!" the voice called, full of excitement. And the bounding up the stairs that often reminded him of a Saint Bernard puppy.  
  
"Dad!" he called again, pushing open the study door. Tall and smiling, cheeks slightly red with sunburn. Wesley looked up from the desk.  
  
"Yes, Conner?"  
  
The coolness in his tone, the distance he tried to keep so that he could be objective-so he could see the threats before they came-- was completely and utterly useless. His defenses had long been thrown, and the boy seemed to know it, somehow. The stern raise of an eyebrow only elicited a cheerful laugh from the boy beside him.  
  
"Aren't you coming Dad? You should see me off to the train."  
  
"I'll be down in a moment," Wesley responded, "Just check and make certain you haven't forgotten something."  
  
And the boy was off again, calling back over his shoulder.  
  
"Allright Dad, but if you don't come soon I'll be forced to steal the car!"  
  
And the sound of those feet again, bounding and pouncing down the old wooden stairs.  
  
Wesley stood and walked to the window. The boy was out there again, and seemed to sense the movement from above. And he looked up to Wesley, alerted to his presence by inhumanly acute ears.  
  
And as he looked out, he felt a nearly desperate wave of tenderness come over him, tinged with twisting tendrils of fear. The prophecy would haunt them forever-him and this boy, who didn't know a thing of prophecies. Not a thing of vampires and demons. He'd given up every book and scroll in his possession. The boy couldn't be allowed to walk in those ways.  
  
The boy was looking up at him, smiling that irrepressible smile. He called out to him with a sudden, unashamed openness.  
  
"I love you, Dad!" he called loudly up to the figure above.  
  
He could protect him all he wanted-- he could guard the boy until the very day he died, and the prophecy would still loom hazy and dark like some lonely storm gathering on the horizon.  
  
He watched the boy packing the last of his things into their little car through the sun drenched window.  
  
"I love you, too," he whispered, quietly.  
  
--- 


End file.
